Akkurat—Digital Type Specimen

Designed by Swiss designer Laurenz Brunner, the sans-serif typeface Akkurat was released in 2004 by the font foundry Lineto. Brunner began designing the typeface in London in 2002, when he was in a “graphic design environment that was driven by illustration and saturated with expressive fonts.” He dubbed Akkurat as the “anti-thesis to that context,” and attributes the stylistic elements to Switzerland’s modernist style.

The font’s clean and crisp character style is reminiscent of Helvetica in that it has since taken over the graphic design world. It is now widely used in publications along with other design medias, and can be found in Al Gore’s book ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ as well as on Prada’s corporate website. With the Akkurat typeface, Brunner was able to achieve a balance by creating innovative typeface aspects while maintaining the restraint necessary to allow the font to have a wide variety of use.

Laurenz Brunner, 2004

The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.